


In Color

by justanotherStonyfan



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: F/M, M/M, spoilers for Cap and Cap 2
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-04
Updated: 2014-05-04
Packaged: 2018-01-21 22:33:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 680
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1566440
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/justanotherStonyfan/pseuds/justanotherStonyfan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Based on a tumblr post by</p>
<p><a href="http://apharthurkirklands.tumblr.com/post/83699126169/apharthurkirklands-au-where-everything-is-black">apharthurkirklands</a> that read;
<i>au where everything is black and white until you meet your soulmate. ADDITIONALLY: when your soulmate dies, the world goes back to black and white</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	In Color

**Author's Note:**

> Aside from my spectacularly unoriginal title, there's not much to say. Also posted to my tumblr - my username's the same.

You grow up with Bucky. At eight years old, the world turned to color and you both knew it, you both felt it, even if you didn’t understand what it meant. Thank God for it, too, that lifeline to hold onto, that one thing you could hold on to. “Who’s gonna save you now, kid?” in a dank back-alley, and you smile with red blood staining your teeth because “he’s standing behind you and he’s wearing green and blue” and he’ll always come for you.

Until he falls. But the world doesn’t turn gray and you wonder why until she walks through the wreckage and tells you that you can’t get drunk, and suddenly the red lipstick tells you everything you didn’t notice in that red dress, and things will be all right. The weapons are still blue and you wish for gray some nights when the seat is empty next to you in the bar, but her red lipstick keeps you going. You wonder, as blue disintegrates red, as ice that’s blue and white comes up to meet you, if the world will ever be in color for Peggy again. You hope so, as you promise to take her out to dance. Some day, you want her to see her children in color.

When you wake, things are drab. You think maybe it’s because you’re older until you hear that she’s not gone, and you hear that she had a family. Maybe it’s that. She’s still yours but you’re not hers. And you fight, and you win, and one day you think “things just aren’t as colorful,” or “things are so drab these days” and then you find out about her, what’s happening to such a sharp mind, and slowly the rest of the color starts to drain from everything. You go and see her. You keep saying it’ll be all right but she asks you sometimes why things seem so sad, why the colors aren’t like they should be. She likes the color of your hair, she tells you sometimes, and you remember the day the world should have turned gray and now you barely remember the color of your hair yourself. And sometimes you’re together and she’ll look at you and she’ll say your name and for ten minutes the sunset blazes red and orange and yellow, but in the morning you can barely see the colors of the leaves on the trees. It will be better for both of you when things are black and white. You think it will be a relief. But you still miss those sunsets almost as much as you miss the color of her lipstick.

Until you’re trying to keep your head on your shoulders, trying to keep yourself moving, trying to push back the pain and put one foot in front of the other so that’s what you do. One foot in front of the other, mile after mile, until you see someone in front of you in the early morning light, and you think you’re imagining how strong the rose-colored tint to the gray sky is, until you realize the reason his shirt and his shorts are gray are _because they’re gray._ The stripe on his shorts is yellow/green like the workmen you see outside your apartment sometimes, and it wells up inside of you – not once, not twice but can you really have a third, should anyone be so lucky? And you’ll know in ten seconds, in five seconds, you’ll know in two, and with fear and worry and desperate, desperate hope, you tell him,

“On your left,” and the world explodes in color, red and rose and purple and gold, green grass and peach stone beneath your feet, white marble painted violet in the sunrise and you turn and look at him and he says, out of breath just like you, and not from the run,

“Damn, I forgot how beautiful it was,” and neither of you are each others’ first, but Sam’s here and you’re here and the world, oh, the world is in _color._


End file.
